


white tulips, broken bones, and purple ink

by dandelionlighters



Category: Legacies (TV 2018)
Genre: F/M, One-Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:34:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24976978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dandelionlighters/pseuds/dandelionlighters
Summary: 2x03: After Ethan breaks his arm at the game, he is visited by a strange girl in the hospital.
Relationships: Josie Saltzman/Ethan Machado
Comments: 8
Kudos: 71





	white tulips, broken bones, and purple ink

The pain was excruciating. 

It was worse than every skinned knee and paper cut he had ever gotten in his life, put together. In fact, the pain was enough to bring him to his knees, and he fell to the grass with a scream. 

His principal and mom rushed to him, calling his name, saying something, _anything_ , but mere minutes later, Ethan found that he couldn’t remember a single word. 

The trip from the game to the hospital was a blur. It was long, though. Every passing second felt like his bones were breaking all over again, and he felt no true relief until the doctors hopped him up on painkillers and put him to sleep for the surgery. 

When he woke up, it was to an arm full of plates and nails and screws, and a cast to spare. 

His mom was crying, and his sister was crying, too, but he had the instant, sneaking suspicion that they had been crying long before he woke up. It was hard for _him_ not to cry, but he at least waited for them to leave before doing it. 

Football was the most important thing in his life. He spent all of his time thinking about it—he breathed for it, his heart beat for it. This injury would surely make him lose his scholarship, and all for...

All for a pick-up game. 

Why had he played? Why couldn’t he have just sat out the game? He could only blame himself now. There was no one else, no matter how much he longed to pass off his anger. He could only hate himself for it. 

So, the tears came. 

They came hot and heavy, obscuring his eyesight and soaking the collar of his hospital gown as they dripped down his face. 

Suddenly, the tears consumed him, until all he could see was the blur of his vision, all he could hear was himself crying, all he could taste was the bitter salt of his tears, all he could feel was the wet stream of them down his cheeks. 

After a long time, he stopped crying. When he did, it took him just as long to realize that the hospital was very, very silent. Deafeningly so. For a brief moment, he wondered if he had been crying loudly enough for someone to hear him, and he flushed.

He tried to cover the sudden red adorning his cheeks by drinking the paper cup of water the nurse had given him, but it did nothing to reduce his embarrassment. He placed the cup back on his bedside table, licking at his wet lips. 

Then, the _tapping_ came. 

It disrupted the silence. It wasn’t loud, or obnoxious, and it definitely wasn’t a pet peeve of Ethan’s, but he found himself annoyed. 

He looked around to locate the source of it, and found a girl just outside his room, by the nurse’s station. He saw that he recognized her, from the #2 on the back of her jersey to the ribbon in her ponytail. It was dark enough outside his windows that he distantly wondered why she was still in her uniform from the game. 

The girl was leaning against the counter with her elbows propped up, talking to a woman in scrubs. 

Whatever she was saying, he couldn’t hear it, but he could definitely hear the sound of her shoe tapping against the tile. It unnerved him and piqued his interest all at once, and he found himself sitting up from beneath the sheets his mom had tucked him in. 

Looking closer, he noticed that the girl had flowers with her. She was also glancing at him from time to time, an expression on her face that he couldn’t quite interpret from the distance, or maybe he just wasn’t good at reading people. 

But he was good at flowers. Ethan Machado _knew_ flowers. He had been buying them for his deceased parents ever since they had orphaned him at age nine, visiting their graves for years now. 

At age twelve, he had been lucky enough to be adopted by his mom, the Sheriff, and lucky enough that she and his sister were _happy_ to come with him to visit their graves sometimes, too. 

So, yeah, Ethan recognized the flowers. They were white tulips—a symbol of apology, a request for forgiveness. In fact, they were the first flowers he had bought for his parents after their deaths, when he had felt solely responsible and had asked the florist at the store for a way to apologize. 

Suddenly, the nurse pointed at him and the girl nodded, and Ethan shook himself from his thoughts, his eyes narrowing as he tried to figure out what they wanted with him. 

His eyes then widened as he realized that the girl was coming towards him, but at the last minute she seemed to lose her courage and retreated back to the counter. 

“I can see you, you know!” he called out to her and waved in emphasis, feeling brave. The girl clearly did not feel the same, because she looked away and pretended not to hear him. 

It only made him braver. 

(Or maybe that was just the painkillers.) 

He grabbed the empty, paper cup by his bedside table and chucked it as hard as he could in her direction. Since he wasn’t used to throwing things with his left hand, the cup hit the floor a couple of feet away from her. 

It was enough to get her attention, though. 

She blushed dark red and quickly grabbed the vase of flowers, speeding into his room like she was being chased by the devil. 

She closed the door behind her—this struck him as odd but he didn’t question it—setting the flowers on his table and wrapping her arms around herself like she was nervous, or guilty. 

He couldn’t tell. 

“Hi,” she said, and he waited for her to say more, but she didn’t. He found himself at a loss for words, too. He also found that she was pretty. Her jaw was soft, and her lips were full and pink, her eyes soft and brown. 

Very pretty. She was _very_ pretty, indeed. 

“Hey.” His voice was hoarse from disuse. He cleared his throat in vain. “I remember you from the game.” 

She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, her eyes darting around the room almost in... _panic_? But no. That couldn’t be right. Had he done something to scare her?

“You do?” she asked, her own voice small, like she wasn’t wearing a Salvatore Boarding School football jersey. He laughed and nodded. 

“Yeah. Wide receiver, right?” She bit down on her lip, but she didn’t shake her head to deny or even nod to confirm. It wasn’t exactly awkward, but he felt nervous enough that his brain worked extra-hard to think of something to talk about. 

The game came rushing back to him with startling clarity. Wanting to make her feel more comfortable, he teased, “You’re the one that started celebrating a touchdown twenty yards away from the end zone.” 

Thinking about it more, he added, tone still playful, “It’s like you practically _handed_ me the ball.” 

The girl raised her eyebrows, a pout turning her lips down. She muttered, “I did not.” 

He only smirked. 

“That was illegal, by the way,” she continued, referring to him taking the ball from her. “You’re not allowed to steal it from me like that.” 

“Maybe not,” he agreed, that same quirk to his lips. The corners of her own started to rise as well, and he quite liked seeing her smile. “I looked pretty cool doing it, though, huh?” 

“Maybe.” 

It was silent for a long moment, and the silence seemed to drag on forever, until she broke it. 

“I’m sorry,” she blurted, throwing her hand out to motion towards his cast. At his confused look, she clarified. “For what happened to your arm.” 

“Oh,” he breathed. It was funny, he realized. In the time that he had been talking to her, Ethan had completely forgotten about his injury. 

_Funny_. 

“Me, too,” he ended up saying, and this time, when the room dissolved into silence again, it dragged on for even longer than the first time. He allowed it to, his thoughts overrun and wild, but all circling onto a single question: 

Why was this girl he didn’t even know apologizing and bringing him flowers? 

Ethan wasn’t brave enough to ask. 

“I should go,” the girl said, after a solid minute, her gaze at her feet. She stepped back, and his heart dropped to his stomach. Ethan suddenly felt lonely.

Hadn’t he been the one to send his family away, though? 

“Wait,” he called after her, just before her fingers could wrap around the doorknob. 

She turned around so quickly that he wondered if _she_ was lonely, too. 

“Do you want to sign my cast?” he asked, looking pointedly at his broken arm. He quirked up a smile, wanting to know the girl’s name. Hopefully, the Machado charm would be good for something. 

It turned out that it _was_ , because the girl shyly nodded and retreated back to her previous spot in front of him. He smiled at her, and she smiled back. 

Ethan then reached across his bedside table and handed her the black marker his mom, sister, and doctor had used to sign his cast. 

The girl hesitated, but she accepted the marker all the same and hovered over him as she uncapped it. They were close enough now that he could just barely make out the scent of her perfume, something floral and mysterious that faintly reminded him of Hope, the loner girl he had met a few days ago. 

He blinked to dispel _those_ particular thoughts away, watching as the girl looped out her name in a pretty font and even dotted her _I_ with a heart. 

For a very brief moment, Ethan could have sworn that he saw something red glow from the tips of her fingers, but it was gone so quickly he assumed that he had simply imagined it. 

The girl then stepped away and gave him an odd look, but once again, it flashed across her face _so quickly_ he wasn’t sure that he had truly seen it at all. She bid him goodbye with a small wave, leaving as quickly as she had come. 

Ethan waited until he could no longer see her to check his cast, and then grinned to himself as he read the girl’s name out loud. “Josie.” 

It wasn’t until minutes later that he realized that she had spelled out her name in purple ink.   


He blanked, mind swarming. Hadn’t he given her a black marker? 

Another startling realization:

She had taken the marker with her. 

And then, once more:

He had never thanked her for the flowers. 

**Author's Note:**

> i’ll probably be posting one-shots or short stories like this every day until i get a break from work :) thanks for reading!


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